


A Fixed Point In Time

by KahtyaSofia



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Children of Earth, Crossover, Gen, One Shot, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-26
Updated: 2009-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:30:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KahtyaSofia/pseuds/KahtyaSofia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor tracks down Jack and is surprised by the reception he receives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fixed Point In Time

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd, all errors my own. Everyone is writing stories where the Doctor COULDN'T come help. I think he deliberately didn't show up and there's one very good reason why.

Jack was sat in the dark, propped on the miniscule pillows of a too-firm mattress, in a hotel of questionable repute and zero cleanliness. He was no longer sure what country he was in; if he was even still in the British Isles.

This was how things had been since he'd saved the world again. Once more into the breach and this time the breach had collapsed in on him. Jack raised the bottle to his lips yet again, knowing by the weight of it he was nearing the time he would have to crack the seal on the second one of the night.

He couldn't sleep. Jack only ever took these rooms in order to get away from the press of people resuming their lives. He'd made that possible for them. Jack had stopped the threat but only after making two of the greatest personal sacrifices he'd ever made.

Gwen and Rhys had gone home to Cardiff but Jack wouldn't follow. He knew that if he did, the ghosts of Ianto would haunt the city. He had no home, he couldn't sleep, and his brain kept forcing him to remember. His only solution was to try to drink himself into oblivion every few days. It never worked. The pain of Ianto's death was always back with him in the morning.

So was the remembered pleasure of having been so ruthless.

There was a firm knock on the door of the room and Jack ignored it. No one knew he was here and he hadn't ordered Room Service.

The knock sounded again, more insistently. Jack's annoyance began to flare.

"Jack," a familiar voice called. "I know you're in there."

A white-hot rage shot through Jack and his mouth twisted into the angry grimace he so often wore these days. That voice dared to show up now?

"Jack," the voice cantillated impatiently. "You know this flimsy lock can't stop me, so why not just answer the door."

"You're more than a week too late," Jack shouted his rage at the door. "We handled it without you, so you can just leave."

An electronic whirring sounded from the other side of the door and the lock mechanism beeped. The Doctor stepped into Jack's room and flicked on the light switch. His expression was as dark as Jack's mood.

"Thought sure I'd find you find you back in Cardiff, monitoring the Rift and all," The Doctor said, wandering around the small and Spartan room.

"Rift monitoring equipment got blown up," Jack said with a wave of his nearly empty bottle. "They're on their own now."

Jack watched the Doctor pick something up off the tiny writing desk and sniff it. "That has the ring of sour grapes, Jack. We can't have that."

He stared, incredulously, across the room at the Doctor, unable to believe he'd heard such callous words spoken so carelessly.

"The Rift is still spitting out junk that needs to be dealt with, and a myriad of alien threats have their eyes on this pretty little planet right here. You have to be ready, Jack."

The Doctor looked inordinately pleased with himself. Jack was just incensed.

"More than a hundred years of service to this country and its government turned on me," Jack whispered harshly. "Then the governments of the world all decided they were going to lay down arms against an outside threat, but take them up against their own people and just hand over ten percent of their children." His voice had gained volume as his pain and rage enveloped him again.

"They're still very young, Jack." The Doctor picked up something else from the tiny writing desk and licked it. Jack was too angry to be disgusted. "We need to keep them alive long enough to let them grow up in their own time, in their own way."

Jack threw the nearly empty bottle against the wall across from the bed. He was gratified by the sound of shattering glass.

"We? We?" Jack hissed, his lip curling in disgust. "There was no 'we', Doctor. I fried my own grandson's brain because you couldn't be bothered to help."

The Doctor's face seemed to harden and sharpen at Jack's words. "You forget that I'm a Time Lord, Jack."

"I haven't forgotten," Jack replied, resting his head against the headboard and closing his eyes in pain and exhaustion. "I can't forget. I'm reminded every time I come gasping back to life."

"I didn't mean for that to happen." The Doctor came to stand at the foot of the bed, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets and rocking back on his heels. "It was wrong. It's still wrong. It feels all wrong to me."

"So you you've said," Jack growled. "You know what's wrong? Coming back to life beside the dead body of the man you love." Tears pricked the back of Jack's eyes as he remembered Ianto's ashen face as he lay oh so very still.

"I'm very sorry to hear that, Jack." if he didn't know better, Jack would have said The Doctor sounded almost regretful. "Difficult decisions and personal sacrifice are sometimes necessary to set things right."

"Set things right?" Jack reached the edge of his temper and he slowly slid off of the bed. "The people on this planet turned on each other, Ianto died because he urged me to stand up to the threat and to top it all, I took my daughter's only child from her." He violently pushed his forearm under the Doctor's chin and shoved him back into the wall with a loud thud. "Difficult decisions? Personal sacrifice? Why don't you just get the fuck out and leave me the hell alone."

"You're a fixed point in time, Jack." The Doctor pushed back with a surprising strength. "You were never meant to be a part of the twenty-first century. You certainly were never meant to father children three-thousand years early in your own genetic line."

Jack felt weak at The Doctor's words. He dropped his arm and took a step back.

"You. Evolved human genes. Children that were never meant to be born." The Doctor stepped into Jack's space with a fierce expression. "I know the Time Agency taught you better than that."

Jack's knees gave and he collapsed onto the bed.

"Now, I am sorry about Mr. Jones," The Doctor continued, "But I couldn't stop the events that would put time back to rights, no matter how much personal pain it would spare you, Jack."

"I've been here too long," he murmured, mostly to himself. "I needed the contact, the connections."

"Understandable," The Doctor said, laying a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Children are a natural product of strong human connection. You are human, Jack. I've not forgotten that."

"I don't feel very human right now," Jack confessed, staring down at his trembling hands. He'd been violent and cruel in the past few days and he'd enjoyed it.

"Time has straightened out." The Doctor sounded as if he meant to be reassuring. "More was set right than just stopping the 4-5-6, as you called them."

"So, my punishment for having children in a century that isn't mine is to stand and watch my grandson die on my own orders?" Jack rubbed his hands together in agitation.

"It's not about you, Jack." The Doctor seemed as on edge as Jack felt. "Had these events not taken place, intervention would have been required to restore the balance. Since they did take place, inaction was the appropriate action."

Jack's head snapped up and he spoke through clenched teeth, "If I'd sent some other child to their death you'd have shown up to stop me, is that it?"

"Most certainly, if the loss of the child affected time…" The Doctor never got a chance to finish.

Jack came up off the bed in a rush and grabbed him hard by the arm. He shoved the Doctor toward the door of the room. Violence felt good. It filled the empty space that used to contain Ianto.

"Get the fuck out!" he shouted. "Just get the fuck out of here. Get back in your fancy little time machine and leave me the fuck alone."

"Jack, you're over reacting." The Doctor was struggling against him now. "You know how these things need to work."

"I know you're responsible for this mess that is my life." Jack yanked open the room door. "I know you'll abandon me when you have no use for me and show up just expecting my cooperation when you do."

"It's not always about you, Jack," The Doctor tried again but Jack just shoved him through the open door into the empty hallway. "Some things are larger than the both of us."

"You don't get it," Jack said, preparing to shut the door. "This is about a very brave young man and an innocent child." Jack didn't say that it was also about the joy he found in reverting to some of his old ways.

"The young man was brave," The Doctor said, staring hard at Jack. "The child wouldn't have always been innocent."

The shutting of the door prevented Jack from questioning further. He found he was afraid of the truth.


End file.
